... with open eyes, and a generous heart, there is awe 'round many a corner ...

Friday, 12 August 2011

Bird's eye view

Market Street is one-way crossing the CBD from East to West. It runs from Hyde Park North to Darling Harbour. Half-way along Market street in the block between George & York Streets stands the QVB which was built in 1888. Prior to this, there was a market on the site. Hence, the name.

Across Market Street in the photograph above, can you discern the glassed pedestrain walkway at the 1st floor level? I stood in this glassed enclosure to take a series of images up and down Market Street early on a Sunday morning.

In the photo on the LHS, I am facing west, toward Darling Harbour which is over the rise. See that bloke in the centre of the road? Where he is standing used to be the swamp wherefrom the Tank Stream sprang. The TS is the reason the early settlers established Sydney where it is. But within 80 years we had polluted the stream and now it is totally underground. In the photo on the RHS, I am facing east, toward Hyde Park. The neon light is an advertisement in the St James subway station which was dug into the park in 1926. All images should enlarge.

Julie was I was a boy (early 70's) my dad hoisted me up to look through a hole in a fence into a building site ( today the MLC Centre) and told me the water gushing out of the pipe was the Tank Stream. I don't think I was very impressed but distinctly remember the posters for A Clockwork Orange on the hoardings.

Mark, might it have been 'Australia Square' rather than the MLC Centre? MLC is a bit too far up the ridge, but AS is spot on. Indeed, it is through AS that one clambers to go on tours of the TS even today. That poster of Malcolm McDowell and those eyes, is iconic even today.

Yes, it could have been the KG Tower building as it stands directly over the TS which arises at the head of the Pitt Street Mall and continues on beneath the GPO (that was) curves back a bit more to the east to flow (trickle) beneath Australia Square and thence into the western corner of CQ.